How old were they when you first started giving them chores?
Do you give them allowance?
Do they have to do anything extra to get it?
My answers:
Yes, my child has chores.
He’s 2 and 1/2.
He cleans up his toys every night, helps clean the table after dinner, empty the dishwasher ever couple of days, helps me rake (sort of) and clean up the gum balls from our gum tree and occasionally washes windows with a spray bottle filled with water.
I started including him in family clean up as soon as he could follow directions well, probably around 18 months.
Allowance is a moot point right now, but I do try to praise him for good behavior and reward him for being extra helpful.
Not necessarily, though I’ll give him cash for extras. Being part of the family means helping take care of family property, including the house and the lawn. But going above and beyond or performing a particularly difficult chore should warrant some kind of acknolwedgment.
The catboxes and ensuring all cats are fed/watered are his two every day chores, but we generally ask him to help with taking out garbage and yard work as well.
He’s also responsible for either doing his own laundry or (if he’s going to be at his dads for the weekend), ensuring that I know what laundry he needs washed. How old is/are he/she/they?
How old were they when you first started giving them chores?
I think about 8 or so.
Do you give them allowance?
My roommate provides him with an allowance for taking care of her cat. I provide him with his cell phone payment and Microsoft Points. Do they have to do anything extra to get it?
Just standard chores and not get into big trouble.
My kids are 9 and 11 and, yes, they have a few chores. The main ones are setting and clearing the table and loading the dishwasher. We also give them occasional things to do, like cleaning mirrors, sweeping the floor, and cleaning out the fireplace. They get an allowance when my husband remembers to give it to them.
Our pets are pretty low maintenance, but my daughter helps with cleaning the toad cage every few days.
Maggenkid has chores.
She gets $5 pocket money regardless and another $5 if she does her chores without being nagged, or does extra without being asked.
She has to:
make her bed
help with the dishes
make a meal once a week (tinned spaghetti on toast)
vacuum (but when she’s out, I’ll go round and finish it properly)
Voluntarily, she’ll;
Rake up grass when I’ve mowed the lawn.
Ferry weeds and clippings to the compost heap when I’m gardening.
My kid is a bit over 2, and his only real chores so far are cleaning up his books and toys before bed, and helping to put away his outside toys before we come inside. He’s been at least “helping” with toy clean up for a while now… maybe about a year?
If he is around when I’m moving clothes from the washer to the dryer or emptying the dishwasher, he likes to help, and I encourage that.
Do you give your kids chores? Not really, no. For a while there, our object was to teach them to just see what needs doing, in the same way that the husband and I do. So we said, “Do anything constructive that you wish, and tell us about it at dinner.” That didn’t work out because the kids would do nothing, and when we brought it up they’d say, “Well, I was going to dry the dishes!” Fine, but the garbage is overflowing and the living room looks like hell now. “Well, I didn’t know what I could do! It looks fine to me.” So we made them a list of all the things that might possibly need to be done, posted it on the fridge, and said, “Pick anything and do it.” This resulted in both kids dusting the living room every day (which takes a whole minute with that little Swiffer thing), but never doing anything else. I still don’t know how to teach a kid to notice an overflowing garbage can, a puddle of cat barf, a layer of dust, or a full dishwasher needing to be started. The only thing they do with regularity is help with dishes after dinner. They do only what they’re specifically asked to do, beyond that.
How old is/are he/she/they? The boy is 12, the girl 17. There’s my 17 year old stepson as well, but let’s not get on that topic.
How old were they when you first started giving them chores? Too old, apparently. I think overlyverbose is getting off to a good start.
Do you give them allowance? No.
Do they have to do anything extra to get it? I pay them ten bucks apiece for report card As. The girl has money saved from her summer job if she needs more, and the boy blows his money the moment he gets it, on games usually.
ETA: Forgot they also fold and hang their clean clothes.
My kids have morning, lunch and evening chore times. Lunch chores vary by the day. Also, the 8yo does all the kid laundry, and on Saturdays they help me tidy and dust the whole place.
Morning:
8yo: make bed, empty dishwasher, practice music, put dirty breakfast dishes in dishwasher
5yo: make bed, put clean silverware away, put dirty cups in dishwasher
Lunch: a bunch of things, including picking up all shoes, sorting library books, wiping down the toilet, picking up the bathroom, emptying trash, wiping baseboards, washing sliding glass door, sweeping under the table, cleaning mirrors…all sorts of little chores that need to be done once or twice a week.
Evening:
8yo: tidy up living room area, schoolroom, bedroom
5yo: tidy up family room and bedroom
Yes. Chores are divided into two groups:
stuff you do because you live here, like keeping your room clean, putting clothes away, putting toys away
and stuff you can do for money :washing windows, bringing the garbage cans in on trash day, laying out mulch or woodchips, washing my car, raking, vacuuming - pretty much anything I wouldn’t consider their job but they can do for me. We negotiate pricing. Windows are .50, garbage cans are .25.
They are 3 (4 next week!) and 7. They have mad cash.
My son is seven. He’s been helping out with this and that practically since he could walk, but he only got official chores this year.
He takes out garbage, composting and recycling stuff, sweeps the kitchen floor once a week, and makes sure the porch light is on when I get home now that it’s getting darker.
He gets two dollars a week for this, conditional on doing it without whining.
I think the answer is, sort of. My kids are 9 and 6 years old. Eldest keeps the upstairs bath clean, keeps their shared room tidy, gets groceries on his bike and puts them away, sets the table for supper, and often makes the meal plan/grocery list for the week. He looks after his little brother now and again, but not often as Youngest gives him hell for it. He makes his bed every day but that’s a personal thing, I usually turn the beds down rather than making them up but he likes his bed made up. He wants to learn to iron and to cook but we have not for various reasons started on that yet.
He feeds and cares for his rat but this is according to him not a chore.
Youngest vacuums and mops rather haphazardly, and keeps their shared room tidy. He does more on a regular basis than Eldest did at 6. This may be his character or it may be a birth order thing – his brother is doing it so he does it too, and it may be that I expect is because his brother is also doing it.
Occasional cleaning up started very early, as soon as they could follow directions, but I don’t expect anything like responsibility for a particular task until around 7 years old, for the completely irrational reason that when I was a child we were treated very much as babies until we had our first communion (also at 7) whereupon certain privileges were afforded and certain responsibilities were given and I seem to have followed the family pattern.
For us anyway, the task for ages 7 to early teens (for the similarly irrational reason that this is when you get confirmed if you are going to be confirmed) is to work out what it is to be a contributing member of a family – to work out what it is that you have to contribute and what kind of support from the others you want and need.
Eldest gets 2 and a half euro a week in pocket money; youngest gets 1 and a half. This is by virtue of their breathing and being members of the family. There is a list of things they can do to earn extra money if they want it and payment for off list work is negotiated for.
